Sixth Circuit says local officials are liable for statements that cause discharge
The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a decision this week that local government officials can be held liable for accusations they make against citizens when it is "reasonably foreseeable" that their statements will cause the citizen to be fired from their job. Martha Paige worked as an accountant for Bunnell Hill Development Company in Warren County, Ohio. She and her husband owned a large farm in that county. When Paige learned about a proposed road project that would interfere with their farming, she organized the Residents' Association of West Central Warren County. On August 6, 2007, Paige attended a public meeting of the Warren County Port Authority. Kimberly Coyner is executive director of the Port Authority. Before the meeting started, Coyner asked Paige about where she worked, and Paige disclosed that she worked for Bunnell Hill. During the meeting, Paige identified herself as president of the Residents' Association, and expressed concerns about an interstate project. Paige alleges that on August 13, 2007, Coyner called Bunnell Hill and told a manager that Paige identified herself as speaking for Bunnell Hill. On August 16, 2007, Bunnell Hill fired paige for using the company name to oppose the interstate project, and disclosed Coyner's call as a basis for the termination.
Continue Reading...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced plans to bring the Oil Spill Response Bill to the House floor for passage. The 
CNBC .jpg)
that included a special presentation on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was recently signed into law. Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center, gave the presentation on the new financial regulations and whistleblower protections outlined in the new law. 
WikiLeaks.org also disclosed that it had previously released the cables to 
and reinstated the whistleblower claim that my client Harry Smith made against the trucking company CRST. In the photo, Harry Smith stands between his wife and fellow truck driver Scooter McNutt. Smith was fired right after he threatened to take the company's defective trailer to the Department of Transportation for inspection. The Department of Labor had dismissed Smith's complaint against CRST after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sent him a dismissal notice, showing that a copy was sent to me, his lawyer. However, OSHA did not actually send me the copy of the dismissal notice until after Smith's time to appeal had expired. Smith does not recall receiving the dismissal notice at all. CRST and the Department of Labor (DOL) tried to blame Smith for failing to appeal on time. The 
On the eve of former Scott Bloch’s criminal sentencing hearing, Dave Nolan hoped to send a message to President Obama; the 
Lawyers are already assessing some of those reforms, and we are focused on the new provisions for whistleblowers. My colleague, Lindsey Williams (Advocacy Director of the 
The most disturbing part is that there is little to no accountability for these agencies. One can argue that if it is human nature that if you think no one is watching you are going to take a cookie out of the jar, then pretty soon you are going to walk away with the whole jar and not even think twice about it. The employees who have the guts to stand up and object are quickly squashed with little to no recourse. The authors of the article even point out that most officials they spoke to requested anonymity because “they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns.” These officials were not disclosing classified information, they were simply criticizing the management of their agencies.
One of today's letters was from the Potomac TRACON local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The other 
At the FAA Whistleblowers Alliance meeting, Gabe Bruno (standing in photo) spoke about 
Moe Hamdan owns the upscale Washington restaurant called The Reserve on L St. NW. Instead of using the restaurant's income to pay the workers' wages, he used it for his own lavish lifestyle. Some workers went six months without being paid what they are owed. "I worked really hard as a bar boy at this restaurant," says former Reserve employee Luis Ducas, "and the owner refuses to pay me my back wages." 
, was a top microbiologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He raised the standards for dental hygiene worldwide when he showed how previous practices were inadequate to protect dental patients from the transmission of HIV. He showed how EPA's rules for land application of sewage sludge did not have the scientific support needed to protect us from airborne diseases. Now the 
whistleblowers only if they have made their disclosures through certain official channels. If any officials in any of those channels happens to be one of the wrongdoers, whistleblowers will face a choice between angering their antagonist with ineffective disclosures, or making a wave with outside channels and losing legal protections. National security information could go only to the government minister, or prime minister.
first approached the law firm of Kohn, Kohn, and Colapinto to represent me in my attempts to address the problems at the FBI crime lab, we were a nation in denial. Whistleblowers had a history of being dealt with brutally. And today the same brutality is evident in every whistleblower case the law firm and the NWC handles. Today I look at the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as countless lives and resources are destroyed and know that somewhere in that group of people who brought this disaster on our nation, there were potential whistleblowers who said to themselves that the risks of blowing the whistle on BP malpractices were just not worth the dangers to themselves and their families. After all, this nation cares little for the rights and protections of individuals who would proactively stop such disasters. This lack of concern is reflected in the actions of our Congressmen and Senators, some of whom have labored hard and diligently to establish whistleblower protections while most ignore obvious safeguards for our nation, our citizens and our natural resources. If we do not wake up in the face of this, the worst environmental disaster in history created by lax standards by the British Petroleum Corporation, then we deserve what we get. 
The story focuses on a manual by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) called the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM). The new IRM recognizes that if a whistleblower provides information leading to a payment to the IRS, the whistleblower would be entitled to a reward of up to 30%. However, the revised IRM adds that if the information reduces a credit or stops a refund, then no reward is made. It also bars rewards arising from criminal penalties. My friend Michael Sullivan of Atlanta told Hilzenrath, "There's apparently an institutional resistance to rewarding whistleblowers that will take some time to dissipate." UBS whistleblower 
Sen. Grassley's efforts to strengthen the False Claims Act (FCA), and ask what the companies are doing to inform employees about the FCA, and then to protect employees who come forward with information about frauds. Sen. Grassley notes that since the 1986 amendments, the government has recovered $22 billion that had been obtained by fraud. He notes that Section 6032 of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) required contractors receiving over $5 million a year to issue written policies to employees about their rights under the FCA. The Bush administration then determined that this Section 6032 did not apply to pharmaceutical companies. Sen. Grassley disagrees, but still wants to know if the 16 biggest pharmaceutical companies nevertheless have the policies that would be required by Section 6032. Of the $22 billion recovered, Pfizer paid $2.3 billion in one settlement. Pfizer's Chris Lodertold Bloomberg that it is responding to the letter and “shares the senator’s desire to detect and report any false claims that may lead to unnecessary costs to our health-care system.” Pfizer, he said, has invested “substantial resources” to “create a compliance program that consists of mandatory training for every one of our employees, proactive monitoring and surveillance, and strict enforcement of all federal and state health-care laws.” I wonder if Pfizer is more highly motivated since it paid that $2.3 billion. Sen. Grassley letters are available in the continuation of this blog entry
.jpg)